Glass-furnace



UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

SAMUEL RICHARDS, OF PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA.

- Specification of Letters Patent No.

To all whom. t may concern Be it known that I, SAMUEL RICHARDS, of the city of Philadelphia and State of Penn- Sylvania, have invented a new and useful Improvement in the Construction of Furnaces for Making Glass; and I do hereby declare the following to be a full and exact description of the same, reference being had to the annexed drawing, showing a perspective view of two glass-furnaces with my improvement attached.

The nature vof my improvement consists in attaching to the glass furnaces now in use a drying and feeding apparatus for drying wood and feeding it into the furnace. Heretofore the wood has been dried in ovens and fed into the furnace by hand. A large quantity of wood was always kept drying in capacious furnaces. This greatly increased the hazard of fire and the expense was considerable. The feeding of this wood to the fires was done by hand and this was the most laborious operation about the furnace. The feeding of the fuel into the glass furnace must be constant and in regular quantities and the wood must when fed in be perfectly dry. To accomplish these results I employ an auxiliary oven 'of considerable length and cause the wood to be carried through it on an endless carrier, and it is afterward removed therefrom and fed into two spouts leading into the upper part of the glass furnaces.

The annexed drawings exhibit only 2 furnaces arranged in connection with my improvement. An economical arrangement would be to construct any number of furnaces in a circle around the point at which the fuel is delivered, so that one shearer may with ease supply the fuel through the chutes int-o the several furnaces.

A and A are two glass furnaces of ordinary construction, having cones, B and B.

C is an oven with 'a fire door D, and a draft aperture E. A brick Hue, F, Il", of semi-elliptical section, extends through this oven, from the front of the oven C. This flue, F, F', is about 100 feet long, 2 feet in inside width and height, and is elevated at the extremity F to about 20 feet from `the Hoor. At H, and H, there is a large iron pulley, supported on proper bearings, and around these pulleys is placed an endless carrier, made of small plates of iron linked together like an endless chain. At H, a

GLASS-FURNACE.

18,059, dated August 25, 1857.

crank or small driving pulley, is attached, by which the endless carrier is driven through the flue. The pieces of metal, I, I', I, composing the joints or links of the endless carrier, are made long enough each to receive a single stick, or small bundle of wood of the proper size to feed into the furnace, say two feet. The flue, F, F, is made of double walls, and there is a hot air space or passage between these walls, so that the ame and heat enters at the lower extremity of the flue, F, F', from the back of the furnace C, and escapes through the chimney at H. The fire being made in the furnace C, the wood is fed in single sticks, or small bundles, on to the links of the endless carrier, I, I, I, I. This carrier, loaded with small bundles of wood, is made to pass with a very slow motion, through the flue, F, F say about ten inches per minute. This velocity is just sutlicient to deliver two sticks of wood at the box L, at just such intervals as the furnace .requires to be fed with that quantity of wood. The sticks of wood, as discharged at L, are slid alternately down chutes, M and M', M and M.| into the body of the furnace A and A. The wood is dried sufliciently by its slow passage, and the small quantity exposed at a time, so that it reaches L in suiicient quantity, at regular intervals, and in a perfectly dry state. Moreover, the necessity of large drying furnaces, the accumulation of large quantities of dried wood, and the labor of carrying wood. to the mouths of four separate furnaces, is obviated, thus dispensing with the labor of several men, diminishing the hazard of fire, and promoting the regularity and perfection of the fueling operation. The same arrangement may be used where coal is employed as a fuel.

Having thus described my improvement, what I claim and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is-

The arrangement of the drying ovens C; the flue, F, F; and the endless carrier, I, I, I; and the chutes M, M, M, M", in combination with the glass furnaces, in the manner and for the purpose, substantially as above described.

SAMUEL RICHARDS.

. Witnesses:

J. H. B. JENKINS, JNO. B. KENNEY. 

